The same Biden administration that wants to close off federal lands to oil and gas development in the name of protecting the environment is looking to take over 22 million acres of federal land for solar panels as part of the president’s goal of achieving a 100 percent clean electricity grid by 2035, reports The Sun.
The Inflation Reduction Act rears its ugly head again. This time, Biden’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will be allowed to take over 22 million acres for a large solar field on public land in eleven Western states.
One of the biggest problems with solar is too little gain for too much land. It also destroys the environment, and birds often die on these solar farms.
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the proposal refines the BLM’s existing maps of land open to solar development in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. An updated roadmap refines the analysis in the original six states and expands to five more states – Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. It also focuses on lands within 10 miles of existing or planned transmission lines and moves away from lands with sensitive resources.
Meanwhile, much-needed oil and gas leasing in Colorado has paused. The communist administration doesn’t like fossil fuels.
The Sun reports:
Mr. Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda, from which the proposal springs, seems to apply selectively to the energy industry. While urging industries to take up solar projects on public lands, the president has sought to make it more expensive for private companies to drill on them. In June, he proposed raising the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to extract oil, gas and coal from public lands, the first increase on royalty rates since 1920.
This rate increase, coupled with heightened costs on the bonds companies must pay before drilling, could increase costs by about $1.8 billion between now and 2031, the Interior Department estimates. In September, the Interior Department also drew criticism for its five-year plan to cut offshore oil and gas leasing, which could elevate domestic fuel prices and make America more reliant on oil imports.
Som environmental activists are opposed to the utility solar farm.
BLM says the plan would direct development away from sensitive resources, but some environmental activists say that is not true.
The BLM has proposed six alternative roadmaps with varying degrees of protection for critical habitat and cultural resources. Still, the preferred option appears to include lands previously ruled unsuitable for solar development [emphasis added], according to Kevin Emmerich, co-founder of Basin and Range Watch, a Nevada-based conservation group.
Biden is investing taxpayer dollars in solar technology, which will likely become the next EV. Also, the $4.3 million from the Inflation ‘Reduction’ Act will never be enough for the extensive plans.
Carbon is again portrayed as the bad guy in the environment without scientific proof. We need it for survival.
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